


Perfect

by Cicileal



Series: Ashes to Ashes [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: F/F, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Moriarty is an asshole, References to Depression, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 02:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16778176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cicileal/pseuds/Cicileal
Summary: The Lone Wanderer tries to get drunk after learning about the real reason his dad was in the vault. And Li is there to try to help him.





	Perfect

He sees nothing when he enters the bar, aside from the glass bottles and cigarettes aching for his caps. He sits at a stool, trembling, and shocked, just staring at the man who approaches him telling him to buy something or to get out. He hears only part of the words, the rest, blurs and echoes that fade into one another, but force his hand when paying, and leaves him desolate and broke. He doesn’t admit to it, doesn’t care that these things have been happening more often than they should, and he doesn’t see any point in acting against it anymore. Everything seems to have gotten progressively worse, the time has stretched on. A long day. A long week. A long year.

This scene is familiar, has been since he left the vault, not because he wants it to be(maybe at first he had wanted it to be) but rather because the one thing that is the same in every town, every settlement, is the bar. Waiting to be filled with suckers caps, and leaving anybody open to the idea of calling it their home.

His home is in the vault. At least that's what he tells himself. And it’s maybe why he still wears the damn vault suit he stole forever ago.

He listens to the radio humming in the background, nothing but dead voices, and news from a place too far away from him to care anymore. He did. Once.

He closes his eyes, he needs to pretend that no one exists just him, the ice in his glass cold against his palm, and the music that is vague above the noises made by the other drunks in the bar. He tries to listen. But nothing. He can’t keep his mind off of their dirty faces, their rusty voices, their dangerous hands.

“Look, kid, you’ve been here for a while. I think it’s time to leave.” The man has a thick accent. From the north. Maybe another country.

“No. It’s nice here… Nice radio…” He doesn’t lift his head. Doesn’t desire the effort.

“I’ll bet. But you know how I am, I’m a businessman, trying to keep the peace, trying to keep my business, and I’ll wager there’s no one who’d want my business when some vault boy keeps stinking up my bar. People like to think there’s standards you know.” He feels the glass being slowly slid away from his hand and he tightens his fists, a reaction, he didn’t waste twenty-five goddamned caps just to have them stolen away. This drink is his.

“Let me… Just let me have this drink.”

“There’s nothin’ but ice now.”

“No. I know what it is. It’s whiskey. Like I ordered.”

“You ordered scotch.”

“No. Whiskey.” He tries to pull the glass back, but the man has a grip of iron, keeps it. But he’s determined, and he pulls the glass with as much strength as he can muster. But the man, he's smart, not like him when he’s sober but enough to make some drunk kid a fool around a crowd of people.

The man let’s go of the glass, and he falls off of his stool, the glass following, and shattering next to his body on the ground. He’s cold and wet and hurt, and the man is smirking with satisfaction at the laughs he bought from the other patrons. The business.

“I hate to tell ya this but that glass you were using, expensive. Sixty caps.” The man is mocking him, kicking him when he’s already down. “ Seventy including all of the _Scotch_ you wasted.”

He hears a thud on the counter, the clinging of caps hitting one another, not him, someone else.

“Just put it on me, Collin. I’ll get him out of here.” There’s a quiet hush in the bar and he knows it’s closing.

“Fine. But just because it’s you Madison. Anyone else and I would have kicked that boys ass.” Firm hands grab him, force him to stand and soon enough he’s leaning on the woman who saved him.

“Just cut the kid some slack okay. He’s going through a lot.”

“So’s everybody else. How I get business.”

“Everyone knows that Collin. It’s why everyone goes to the Brass Lantern.” They’re almost to the door a few more seconds and they’ll be gone. But the silence is thicker, it’s nearly killing him.

“Don’t worry Madison. I’ll remember that the next time your little whore comes begging me for a free drink.” He feels her grip tighten. Feels her turn around.

“You need to shut your damn mouth, Collin.”

“Really. You have any volunteers. Your dead boyfriend maybe.” She’s trembling now, not enough to be noticeable to anyone else, but he can feel it, and he can feel when she breaths, and calms herself. She’s always been proud, hates letting others step on her. But she knows what is best for him, and she knows the actions to take. She turns away from Collin, taking the door in her hand and opening it.

“Nothing to say Madison.” She pauses, and he thinks she will take the last word. Everyone knows she could. Yet she’s silent. She doesn’t. Simply lets the door, fall shut, leaves the thick empty air behind her.

  


-

Madison doesn’t have a key to the kid's house. She had only just learned about his new home the last time he had made his way into Megaton, with her following simply because she had needed to follow. She was a leader, but this kid, he’s all that was left of Catherine. And she knows that he needs her more than the people of the old rusting boat she calls home.

She had loved Catherine. Loved her to the bitter end. Even when Catherine had loved James. Even as she had taken her last breath, the name of her child left sitting on her tongue, silenced before ever having a chance to exist. It was a long time ago, but everything’s still fresh, and everything still kills Madison. Even as she sets the kid on the metal platform beckoning the lock open with a bobby pin. Cathrine had taught her the trick, the way to feel for the clicking of the pins, and patience it took, and the satisfaction one the lock clicks open.

The state he has his home in is not at all surprising, yet it still causes her to recoil, and want to draw herself away from the disgusting site, the sweat, the must, the sex. Nothing but empty bottles and condoms, and medical supplies strewn all over the floor.

She navigates to the couch to the best of her ability, avoiding anything sharp she could cut herself on, and once she reaches it, lets him sink to where his body takes him. He nearly falls off of the couch, but with her fast reactions, and with how light he is, she can easily guide him to what looks like a comfortable sleeping position.

She is left out of breath and listening to the whirring of a machine coming from the kitchen. She wants to help him with the mess his place is in, but it isn’t her responsibility, and the kid needs to learn how to care for himself. So instead, she makes her way to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water or anything the kid had in his fridge.

The kitchen is the best part of the house, it’s clean, meticulous, nothing is out of place and it almost doesn’t smell as bad as the rest of the house. But she doubts that it has anything to do with the kid's habits. No, it is clearly due to the robot lying lifeless on the tiled floor, still humming the same mechanical tune it had been since she had entered the house. She steps around it, trying to keep from disturbing it, and reaches the sink that she is still surprised, has running water. Irradiated water, but running water nonetheless.

She runs the water over her hands, she isn’t sure whether megaton heats their water or not, so turns the faucet so it allows cold water out of the tap, allows the coolness to comfort her fingers. Only now noticing how hot the night was. She let it run for longer than she should have, leaving her fingers freezing and stiff in the cold water. She cupped her hands, catching it and throwing some of it on her face. The dirt, her tears, running down the drain and back to the makeshift filters megaton was using.

It’s not long before she makes her way back to the couch where the kid is sleeping. But not in the position she left him in, instead, he’s curled in on himself, back facing the open air, rising and falling in languid intervals.

She sits beside him and pulls his head into her lap, running her fingers through the curls of his hair. He looks so much like his mother. But maybe it’s just the curls. Catherine had curls. Madison remembers how they were long and kinky, and in spite, of all her complaining she kept them. Madison had always loved the moments when she would run her fingers through Catherine's hair, once when they were young, before James, before the purifier. She had loved the curls, she loved everything about Catherine, maybe the curls were just part of that.

She notices that his hair is cut uneven, like slashes with a knife, there was no way it was professional, or even that anyone took any time on it. No. He cut it himself. She remembers when James had come back, the two of them fought, over the kid’s hair, how it used to be beautiful, and how it was now ruined.

She still thought it was beautiful. Catherine had it short at her wedding, she remembers. She isn’t sure when she starts crying, her vision is blurred.

So many people compare him to his father. But his mother is who he really takes after.

“You’re crying.” He hasn’t moved a muscle, yet he’s awake.

“Sometimes… It happens.”

“I cry too. I try to catch Moriarty, but he’s just a heartless bastard.” She chuckles at that. “It’s fine to cry. I think. Read it somewhere….Said it’s healthy”

“You know anything about health?”

“Hey, I am a trained, and certified Doctor.” He pauses then solemnly adds “Pops made sure of _that_ before he bailed.”

“He wanted you safe.”

“He wanted the G.E.C.K.” They fall silent for a moment. The hum of the robot in the kitchen still a constant, and the sound of shuffling as the kid sits up a variable. Numbers. She thinks. She needs to make these things numbers. She can’t.

“He was doing his best.”

“Oh yeah, let’s give the prize to the best deadbeat dad of the year. First winner place is James Rodriguez, for doing his best.”

“Your coping.”

“Coping is what you do when you need to feel better and I feel,” He grabs for something besides his couch, takes a bottle of whiskey, “Fucking fantastic.” Drinks.

“You know this isn’t healthy.”

“Really, Li, you aren’t going to lecture me about the dangers of drinking right. Because that's really gonna help after I got kicked out of the only half decent bar in town.” Another drink.

She makes a lunge trying to take the bottle from his hand. She grabs it, but he is as tenacious as she is, he fights her. It seems for a moment he will give up, his grip is faltering, and she can feel it slipping away from him, but he finds new power and pulls on the bottle until, once again, it falls to the floor. It doesn’t crack this time, simply spills, but now the stain is soaked in the carpet, and nothing will remove it.

“Damn it, Li!” She got the bottle away from him. “That one was expensive.”

“You’re looking for your father.”

“No, I’m looking for another half decent bar.”

“They’re all closed you, idiot! Everything is gone! You need to find your father!”

“Really. Cause you know what I think. I think it’s about damn time I wait for him to find me. If he’s really ‘ _trying his best_ ’ he’ll come and find me.”

“You know he can’t do that.”

He scoffs, “Than what can he do.”

She sits back on the couch, the kid is drunk. He’s a good person but he’s drunk. It hurts him, makes him ugly, takes his mother away from her, erases who he really is. She just needs to wait it out, just needs to let the high pass, and he’ll calm down.

It became a pattern when he had first arrived in Rivet City, she would find him in the Muddy Rudder, slumped over the counter, with Bell trying to coax him away from the bottle, not succeeding, but it was better than the way Moriarty handled things. Regardless, this was normalcy, to her, to him, and she presumed to the people in this town.

He looks at her, and she can read his feelings change, from anger, to pity, to guilt. Then he sits back, like a scared child, like the kid that he is. And pretends he didn’t hurt her.

“Your nothing like your father. Ash…” She doesn’t know when she starts talking. But she somehow knows she believes in the words she is saying.

“I know. I hear it everywhere I go.” It’s his turn to cry.

“You hurt when you don’t mean to. Destroy what you want to save. Make the wrong decisions.” She still speaking, he doesn’t. She can’t stop.

“No. You’re nothing like your father.”

“I need a drink.” He looks broken. Maybe he is.

“You’re like your mother.” She looks down at her hands, the ones that had held Catherine so many times, the fingers that ran through her hair, and kept her alive as she ran into things she shouldn’t, hands that held her child before she herself could even mutter his name. Hands empty without her.

“Beautiful and broken. So human…” Her voice is breaking and she can’t stop it.

“No one loves you because you're perfect. We love because you’re imperfect.” He staring at the blank TV screen. Red eyes, and a flushed face. He’s so much like his mother. Just as delicate, and just as broken. Someone, Madison knew she needed to protect.

They’re silent. Ash rises, movements stiff and stumbling and still somehow his mothers. Then he walks to the stairs, slowly, but nonetheless making his way to the bedroom she knew must have been up there. He pauses before he reaches the top, leaning on a pillar for support and looking back at Madison, with the corner of his eye.

“Dad always said mom was perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was really fun to write. And also not in order in the series I'm writing. I just really wanted to write this scene.


End file.
